1996 WCHA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament


The 1996 WCHA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament was the 37th conference playoff in league history and 44th season where a WCHA champion was crowned. The tournament was played between March 1 and March 9, 1996. First round games were played at home team campus sites while all 'Final Five' matches were held at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. By winning the tournament, Minnesota was awarded the Broadmoor Trophy and received the WCHA's automatic bid to the 1996 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament.

Format

The first round of the postseason tournament featured a best-of-three games format. All ten conference teams participated in the tournament. Teams were seeded No. 1 through No. 9 according to their final conference standing, with a tiebreaker system used to seed teams with an identical number of points accumulated. The top five seeded teams each earned home ice and hosted one of the lower seeded teams.
The winners of the first round series advanced to the Bradley Center for the WCHA Final Five, the collective name for the quarterfinal, semifinal, and championship rounds. The Final Five uses a single-elimination format. Teams were re-seeded No. 1 through No. 5 according to the final regular season conference standings, with the top three teams automatically advancing to the semifinals and the remaining two playing in a quarterfinal game. The semifinal pitted the top remaining seed against the winner of the quarterfinal game while the two other teams that received byes were matched against one another with the winners advancing to the championship game and the losers meeting in a Third Place contest. The Tournament Champion received an automatic bid to the 1996 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament.

Conference Standings

Note: GP = Games Played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; PTS = Points; GF = Goals For; GA = Goals Against

Bracket

Teams are reseeded after the first round
Note: * denotes overtime period

Quarterfinals

(1) Colorado College vs. (10) Northern Michigan

(2) Minnesota vs. (9) Alaska-Anchorage

(3) Denver vs. (8) St. Cloud State

(4) Minnesota-Duluth vs. (7) Michigan Tech

(5) North Dakota vs. (6) Wisconsin

Quarterfinal

(7) Michigan Tech vs. (8) St. Cloud State

Semifinals

(1) Colorado College vs. (7) Michigan Tech

(2) Minnesota vs. (6) Wisconsin

Third Place

(1) Colorado College vs. (6) Wisconsin

Championship

(2) Minnesota vs. (7) Michigan Tech

Tournament awards

All-Tournament Team">List of WCHA All-Tournament Team">All-Tournament Team

* Most Valuable Player